Permanence

I have done very many groups, and had many pertinent growth experiences in which I have really felt that I had changed and gained tremendous new insight. But I still make the same mistakes, and despite everything I have done, still repeat the past as if I have no choice. What to do? Can change be permanent? Or is the work we do on ourselves simply illusion, signifying nothing? Can sannyas be permanent change?

Don't stand in the way of God, that's all. And then He is in the flower, and in the bird on the wing; then He is in the breeze passing through the trees. When you are not there to distort, you will find Him everywhere -- because He is everything. It is a miracle how we go on missing Him. But you are asking for something permanent. The ego can never be permanent; it is a momentary thing. And out of the ego, whatsoever you gain will be lost. You are asking: Cannot a wave be made permanent? The wave cannot be made permanent. The only way is to freeze it so it becomes ice. But then it is not a wave, it is just a piece of ice. Then it is no more a wave because it cannot wave. The aliveness is gone, the dynamism is gone. You fall…

Into the same rivers we step and do not step.

YOU CANNOT STEP TWICE IN THE SAME RIVER. EVERYTHING FLOWS AND NOTHING ABIDES. EVERYTHING GIVES WAY AND NOTHING STAYS FIXED. COOL THINGS BECOME WARM, THE WARM GROWS COOL. THE MOIST DRIES, THE PARCHED BECOMES MOIST. IT IS BY DISEASE THAT HEALTH IS PLEASANT; BY EVIL THAT GOOD IS PLEASANT, BY HUNGER, SATIETY; BY WEARINESS, REST. IT IS ONE AND THE SAME THING TO BE LIVING OR DEAD, AWAKE OR ASLEEP, YOUNG OR OLD. THE FORMER ASPECT IN EACH CASE BECOMES THE LATTER, AND THE LATTER AGAIN THE FORMER, BY SUDDEN UNEXPECTED REVERSAL. IT THROWS APART AND THEN BRINGS TOGETHER AGAIN. ALL THINGS COME IN THEIR DUE SEASONS. INTO THE SAME RIVERS WE STEP AND DO NOT STEP... You cannot find greater egoists than so called spiritualists. They are always condemning the materialist. They are always saying: "What! You are wasting your life. Eat, drink, and be merry -- this is…

Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor.

HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE. THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE. Heraclitus has said, "You cannot step twice in the same river." The same can be said about man: you cannot meet the same man again -- impossible! And because of this fact, and because of our ignorance of it, life becomes a misery -- because you go on expecting the other to be the same. You marry a girl and you expect her to be the same. She cannot be! Unmarried, she was different; married, she is completely different. A lover is something else, a husband is something totally different. You cannot expect your lover to meet you through your husband. That is impossible. A lover is a lover; a husband is a husband. The moment a lover becomes a husband, everything has changed. But you go on expecting. That creates misery -- unnecessary misery. If we can…

Beloved Osho, the silence I experience lately in your presence is becoming vaster and deeper; and when you leave chuang tzu auditorium, tears roll gently down my face and I want nothing more than to stay there. So it is difficult to be active afterwards because I know slowly the experience will change, and I would like to remain there. Beloved master, is love so fragile that we cannot hold it even with two fingers?

I have heard about a drunkard who was watching a man doing pushups on the beach. For a long time the drunkard went around him, looked from every side, and finally said, "Listen, man, I should not interfere in whatever you are doing, but I cannot resist the temptation any more. Your girl is no longer there; you are unnecessarily doing exercises. She must have gone long ago, because I have been watching you for almost one hour; you are perspiring, huffing and puffing, and the girl is no longer there, I have looked from every nook and corner. Strange that this man is so deep in love!" But in life, that's exactly what we are doing with all our fragile experiences. Somehow we have an unconscious desire for things to be permanent. Why this desire is in the unconscious, is something to be explored. Perhaps it is the fear…